Baked Mashed Potato Cakes with Bacon

Looks like four of my favourite foods combined into one mouthful – how about you? Thought so! And sooooo simple to whip up – all you are doing is making mashed potato, wrapping it in bacon, sprinkling the top & baking. Done.

Baked Mashed Potato Cakes with Bacon – part of my #pimpyourmash movement. (Well it’s hardly a movement – it’s just me, and it’s probably been done before – but you get the idea)

As I have mentioned before, we eat a LOT of mashed potato in this house – so I am constantly looking for ways to pimp it to add a bit of variety. These little beauties are my latest variation.

Instructions

Boil/steam/microwave your potato in salted water until it is tender - I microwave mine in a large pyrex/glass bowl with the potato covered in water on high for about 25 mins (see notes regarding salt)

Lay your bacon rashers out long ways, and trim the wider parts so you have a long piece of bacon roughly 3 cm or 1 1/4 " wide the whole length of the rasher (see notes)

Once your potato is tender mash it well until you have no lumps then add melted butter, garlic powder, shallots/scallions, sour cream, 25 g parmesan cheese & milk mixing well to combine - don't over mix (see notes)

Once combined, take about 2/3 cup of mashed potato mixture & form a rough ball. Place potato ball on to work surface and flatten just slightly with your fingers

Take one rasher of bacon and wrap in loosely around the slightly flattened ball - then flatten the ball to fill out into the ring of bacon and secure the bacon with a toothpick & repeat until you have 4 cakes - try not to pack them down too much - the potato will sit roughly even with the top of the bacon

Roughen the top of the cakes gently using a fork - this helps them crisp a little on top

Place panko crumbs on a shallow plate, and sit the potato cakes one by one into the panko to lightly coat the bottom with crumbs, then place potato cakes onto prepared baking tray - there will be panko left over

Mix the remaining panko crumbs with the remaining 5 g of grated parmesan cheese, and sprinkle this breadcrumb mixture evenly over the top of the potato cakes

Bake for 20 mins or until lightly browned on top, then grill/broil for a further 3 mins for some extra crunch

Recipe Notes

The potatoes I have used for this recipe are sebago potatoes - in Australian supermarkets they are the ones covered in dirt that are sold loose. I find these are cheap & work great for mash - so they work great in this recipe. My suggestion would be that if you are happy with the texture of your own mashed potato that you usually make - then you could also use that variety for this recipe. I will say that I used (by accident & then couldn't take the photos like I planned - boo) coliban potatoes which didn't come out to well. The mash was grainy & oozed out the bottom of the cakes quite a lot.

If you are going to microwave your potatoes like me, or boil them - then I would add 1/4 tsp salt to the water, and then add any more to taste when you add your mash ingredients. That being said if you go down the steam route, then you have to add your salt when you are mixing your mash.

I like to trim the bacon because it makes for nice presentation - you can just slide any off-cuts of bacon into your bacon rings where it overlaps - more bacon, no problem!

When you are mixing your extra ingredients into your potato to make the mash, you don't want to over mix it. You want everything to be well combined, but the more you mix the denser your end product will be. Potato that is well cooked (but not mush) and then mashed until free of lumps will help your extra ingredients combine for a smooth but fluffy mash. This will also mean the cakes rise slightly in the oven, so don't pack them down to much into the bacon rings.